As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Monday, November 20, 2006

Jones Responds to Fetzer, Fetzer Responds to Jones

The "Scholars" continue their soap opera drama, with Jones replying in an open letter on their website. I found this part particularly interesting:

Jim, A few things need to be straightened out first.1. Is the directed-beams hypothesis a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis? Let the proponents delineate crucial experiments which will permit testing the hypothesis, and which have the potential of proving the hypothesis wrong. If an hypothesis is not falsifiable by experiments, it is not scientific.

I agree, which is why I have always objected to Jones' use of super nano-thermate cutting charges in the WTC. Since he is basing his hypothesis entirely on speculative technology, there is no way to prove it wrong. He should either demonstrate the use of this technology, or shut up about it.

Jones actually has a decent little debunking of Wood's theories. They both think each other are idiots, and they are both right. Fetzer replies here, although it is mostly a bunch of administrative suggestions. In my humble opinion, the fact that they don't have adequate by-laws is the least of their problems.

Fetzer made an interesting post in the comments on 9/11 blogger. Apparently he is embracing the Unified Demolition Theory:

Obviously unfamiliar with my lectures in Tucson, this is more moronic drivel. I tend toward a mixed causation theory of the destruction of the WTC, where somemassive explosives (possibly mini-nukes?) were used in the subbasements about the time the planes hit the buildings, that high-tech weapons (directed energy,possibly from WTC-7, possibly from space?) were used to deconstruct most of thetowers and then more conventional explosives (possibly thermite or thermate?) were used to bring down the last 20 floors or so. Given the available evidence,this is my best guess, but obviously all of this has to be confirmed. What is beyond question, in my view, is that even super-thermate in the towers cannotpossibly account for the enormous and total devastation of the complete WTC!I suggest reviewing Judy's studies and my lectures before drawing conclusions, if you have any respect for logic and evidence, which may be too much to ask.

According to the new calculation, the piano would have hit the ground in 11 seconds. I dare say that confirms my basic point, since the 9/11 Commission and NIST have assigned times of destruction for the towers of 10 seconds and 9 seconds apiece. So even though the calculation was flawed, the key point remains. The Twin Towers were demolished in less time than free fall through air!

Heh, I fear that I may be at least partly responsible for the resurgence of the mini-nuke theory. I had a pretty heated discussion with a twoofer who insisted that the demolition of the WTC would have required something on the order of 100 terajoules of energy. He had calculations to back it up, although they were based on the expansion of gas, and as such were totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. Anyway, just to demonstrate how silly the idea was, I calculated for him the amount of explosive required to produce that much energy, ending with the conclusion that "it would have required a nuke".

Sure enough, instead of realizing that his calculations were flawed, this clown took it to mean that a nuke MUST have been used at ground zero. Last I heard, him and some "physics" buddies of his were "researching" the types of nukes in the US arsenal.